Thursday, 2 February 2017

Belarus 2017 – Nikita Hodas – Voices In My Head

This shouldn't work. A lone, doe-eyed boy with murderous eyes singing a song in a fractured voice about the voices in his head while clutching an unspecified book? In normal circumstances this would be the point at which you quietly call the police.But
heavens, no more than 20 seconds in you suddenly realise that you’ve
been intently staring at the screen and hanging on his every minimal
move. It even looks like it’s going to get a bit silly when the
lights come up and we can see the singing waiting staff warbling in
the wings, but no. Instead it drifts along with an innocent but
intelligent charm, and you can’t help but love the thing by it’s
eventual fading out. These are the kinds of songs that from audio alone you wonder why they ever got as far as the first audition stage. But there was something so beautifully fragile and off-kilter about the live performance that you can see exactly why it got there. The right song might have won in Belarus for a change, but I'd have loved for this to have done well in the polls too.

He's really good and it was actually clear that he understands what he's singing about. I think he could be a really strong voice in the Belorussian music scene. I think he's not yet ready for ESC but I really really liked this.

What's this blog for?

Every year, the Eurovision Song Contest chucks up some amazing songs, but only a tiny few ever make it through to the televised final stages. For the couple of dozen that make it to Eurovision proper, there are hundreds that fall by the wayside in the semi-finals and local qualification tournaments. And very often that is where the true gems are to be found.

So Eurovision Apocalypse is here to dredge the best (and occasionally worst) of them out of the musical nether regions, as well as some of the other greatest oddities the contest has thrown up over the last fifty-odd years.